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Wednesday, 25 December 2013

Arrested For Cheating In Love

As we wind down this calendar year, a rather intriguing news is going around in the Hyderabad media. Apparently, a overzealous police officer Syed Javed made "six couples, who were hanging out in a park outside the fort, do sit-ups. According to police, a patrol team of the Golconda police saw several young couples sitting in a park near the fort. Inspector Javed and his team abused them and made them do sit-ups as a punishment. He also warned them against visiting parks." Maybe this cop is an ultra-conservative, love-starved, sex-starved individual.

But this news is not what intrigued me the most. Over a period of months and years, I have been reading news reports of a young woman approaching a police station complaining against being cheated by her lover. And wonder of wonders, the police do act. They arrest the man.

Whenever I read such news, I usually go, "What the heck is this? India (or Andhra Pradesh) is the only place in the world where this must be happening!!!. If a boy promises to marry his lover and then wants to marry someone else, lo the girl can approach the police station and they cops arrest the boy. May be there is such a law that allows them to, I don't know.

I had read a few lessons about our constitution in the social studies textbooks at school. But I hardly know anything that matters to an individual from the constitutional and legal point of view. And must be millions of my fellow citizens. I am a constitution and law illiterate. Failure of of our education system.

When a policeman approaches you and wants to arrest you or take some action against you, I don't know what the process is. Should you ask under what sections are you arresting me? Should you ask under which law are you asking me to do sit ups? Does the cop say, as they say in western soaps, 'You have the right to remain silent, what ever you say may be used against you.' I have never faced such a situation and never want to, but I think the knowledge and awareness of all important laws and legal procedures that affect the individual should be there in every citizen. We just don't have it. Failure of our education system.

Similarly, what acts are legal and what are illegal? If a young man and woman fall in love, the man promises to marry her, but then changes his mind and breaks up the relationship and wants to marry someone else, what is the role of the police man and the police station? Is any law broken here? Beats me, I am a constitution and law illiterate.

I think in a massive upheaval of our education system, constitutionalism should be grilled down in every citizen and every future citizen.

PS : Please keep visiting this post. I will be scanning the news paper clipping of 'arrested for cheating in love' type news stories and putting those scans here.
Update, 07-Jan-2014
Got some clarity on the issue. Perhaps there is some where in our law that the actions of a youth promising to marry a woman, impregnating her, and then breaking the promising is tantamount to rape. I intend to find out more about the law. My attention to this was drawn by a Delhi High Court ruling. The A.P. police may need to draw upon before entertaining 'got cheated in love, please arrest they boy/man...sob....sob type cases.

The news item was wrongly titled 'Premarital Sex Immoral, No Religion Permits it: Delhi Court'. The way the PTI reporter titled the new story, misses the essence of the judgment. Maybe the PTI journalist has a tendency towards sensationalizing the news to attract more reader attention. The crux of the judgment is that if a woman enters into a physical relationship with a man, albeit under the promise of marriage, please deal with it yourself and don't run to the law agencies. Here's the extract --

Additional sessions judge Virender Bhat held that a woman, especially grown up, educated and office-going, who has sexual intercourse on the assurance of marriage does so "at her own peril. In my opinion, every act of sexual intercourse between two adults on the assurance of marriage does not become rape, if the assurance of promise is not fulfilled later on by the boy," he said, adding: "When a grown up, educated and office-going woman subjects herself to sexual intercourse with a friend or colleague on the latter's promise that he would marry her, she does so at her own peril. She must be taken to understand the consequences of her act and must know that there is no guarantee that the boy would fulfill his promise."